The present disclosure relates in general to facilitating a communication session in an electronic environment, and in particular to determining participant accounts of a communication session, as well as aggregating communication history to enable a user to view the communication history with another person.
Typically, in order to initiate an electronic communication session, a user can log into an instant messaging service using a username and a password. After the user logs into the instant messaging service, the user can view a contacts list that shows the status of the user's established contacts on that service. When the user desires to establish a communication session with a particular contact on the user's contacts list, the user can select an identifier representing the particular contact, or the intended recipient, from the user's contacts list, create a message in a message box that appears when the user selects the identifier, and send the message to the recipient. Upon receiving the message, the recipient can either respond to the sender or decline to respond. If the recipient responds to the sender, a communication session is established and communication between the sender and the recipient (referred to as “participants of the communication session”) begins. In some instances, the participants of the communication session can invite other contacts to join the communication session.
A number of instant messaging services have become widespread, with some being more popular with certain groups of users. Users are often registered with several instant messaging services and communicate with other users who are also registered with a number of instant messaging services, some of instant messaging services of which do not overlap. Moreover, users registered with several instant messaging services often have different usernames for some of those services. A user can have trouble keeping track of which contacts are on which services and under which usernames.
In some instances, a user can be logged into several instant messaging services. If the user is not currently logged into a service that an intended recipient is currently using, the user must log into that service before the user is able to send messages to the intended recipient. In other instances, a user can be logged into several instant messaging service but only actively using some of those services. If the user is not currently actively using the service that the intended recipient is using, then the user must switch to the service that the intended recipient is using to be able to send messages to the intended recipient. It can be cumbersome for the user to constantly have to log into and/or switch between different services when the user desires to communicate with different contacts.
Further, the user might desire to view a communication history with another user. For instance, the user might be searching for a particular dialogue between the user and another user. However, with each user having multiple usernames associated with multiple instant messaging services, it can be difficult to find the particular dialogue.